tistics, of which he was the first to present a strictly scientific idea the critical and historical introduction to the New Testament, on which, from time to time, he lectured, and which he always enriched with some original suggestions-and, finally, Christian morals, to the elucidation of which he contributed by his criticism of ethics, and by his dissertations in the Memoirs

of the Berlin Academy of Sciences;'-all these branches of knowledge owed a new life and stimulus to the enthusiasm which his prælections universally inspired.

Schleiermacher combined in a wonderful degree the qualifications of the theoretical and the practical theologian-the activity of the zealous pastor with the profound researches of the man of learning. The genius and erudition, which he cultivated in the study and displayed from the chair, were crowned on the Sunday by his eloquent preaching of the divine word, and all through the week were variously interwoven with the humbler duties of his parochial charge, and with the catechetical instruction of the young. For any other man this would have been too much; he must have neglected some of these duties from their very multiplicity: but it was not so with Schleiermacher. He was never heard to complain of being oppressed by his numerous avocations, or of finding one interfere with another. On the contrary, he seemed to find in one a refreshment, and new life for entering on another. To crown all-notwithstanding his incessant occupation, as a pastor, a professor and an author, he was frequently in society, and entered heartily into its spirit. He never brought with him into the circle of his friends the gloom and taciturnity of the closet, but was always the cheerful, animated and instructive companion. He astonished every one who knew him, by the variety and the perfection of his endowments.*

(To be continued.)

T.

Abridged from Erinnerungen an Dr. Friederic Schleiermacher von Dr. Friederic Lucke, from the Theolgische und Kritiken.'

OBITUARY.

DIED, on February 20th, in the thirty-second year of her age, Mary Ann, the beloved wife of Charles Talbot, Esq., of Kidderminster, and eldest daughter of Henry Hollins, Esq., of Pleasly Works, Derbyshire. The early life of this excellent lady was distinguished by an earnest desire of knowledge, which increased with ripening years, and manifested itself in an ardent love of truth, particularly moral and religious truth, pursued by diligent and almost severe study, from a conviction of its importance for the due regulation of the life and manners, and the acquisition of that character, which is most influential in society, and most conducive to its best interests; but more especially, as the means of virtue and present happiness, and of preparation and fitness for a better state. It would not be easy to convey to those who had not a personal knowledge of the deceased, a just notion of the high degree of intellectual and moral attainment which she had acquired, or of the estimation in which

her opinion and judgment were held by those who knew the care and deliberation with which that opinion was formed, and who were qualified to appreciate the soundness and correctness of that judgment. It might be truly said, that her whole life was regulated by the principles of Christian morality, and that her habitual temper and disposition were moulded by that law of love which it prescribes. A life so pure and blameless, so truly virtuous and benevolent, might be expected to terminate with that composure and satisfaction which make the transition from the present to a future tranquil and happy. The views which she entertained, certainly from inquiry and conviction, of the doctrines of the Gospel were strictly Unitarian-simple, consistent, and rational— and those which she believed to be justified by the teachings of Christ and his apostles; and these were the bases of her hope and joy in life and in death. From these, as she explicitly declared, she derived that perfect acquiescence in the will of the supreme Arbiter and Disposer of all events, which reconciled her mind to the short period that was allotted to her earthly existence, and enabled her to contemplate her early entrance into the mansions of the grave with the serenity of Christian faith. Though possessing a deep sense of the importance and value of life, and a corresponding attachment to it-qualified in a peculiar manner to adorn the station which she occupied, and to contribute essentially to the welfare and happiness of her friends and connexionsthough feeling that respect and affection for them, which had increased and strengthened with her increased ability to estimate their valueand, though esteemed and loved, in no common degree, by those who had the happiness to share in her acquaintance and friendship, she was able to meet the prospect of a temporary separation from them, with the confident assurance that the spirits of the just will be united in a better state, never to be separated any more, in which happiness will be unalloyed, progressive, and everlasting. After a long period of illness, often attended by a considerable degree of suffering, she calmly fell asleep, doubtless to awake to a joyful immortality, leaving nothing to her nearest and dearest friends to regret but their own loss, moderated by the conviction that that loss must be her greatest gain, and accompanied by the devout and fervent wish that their last end and future prospects may be like her's. Mansfield.

J. W.

DISSENTERS' MARRIAGE BILL.

THIS measure has met with a better reception in the House of Commons than, as we think, it deserves. We object to the extravagant fee of five shillings to the clergyman, for merely registering the marriage; we object to the clergyman's being employed at all as the registrar; we object to the imposition of the oath. And why make the broad distinction this Bill, if it passes, will make, between the marriages of Churchmen and Dissenters? Ought not the object of legislation to be to remove existing distinctions rather than to create fresh ones? The tendency of the measure is to disconnect religion from the marriage ceremony-for few parties, comparatively, will take the trouble of adding a religious service to the legal celebration. Let, then, the Dissenting Minister be, pro tunto, s magistrate, and the civil and the religious act can be performed at the same time; or, if the State will regard marriage only as a civil contract, let its requirements be the same both towards Churchmen and Dissenters, and leave each to associate such religious sanetions or observances as they may think proper. We think it very desirable, that every possible means should be taken, at the earliest period, for making known the opinions and wishes of Dissenters, in relation to the celebration of marriage.

T. Forrest, Printer, Manchester

CHRISTIANITY IN THE PAST AND THE FUTURE.

If Christ was God's prophet, his prayer, Father, thy kingdom come,' contains the promise of its own fulfilment. If Christ was right in calling God, Father,' still more does it contain that yromise. The prophet of Providence, to whom the sheet of the future was unrolled, when he taught humanity to approach heaven by prayer, first awakened devotion's heart by naming the paternity of God; and instant from the doctrine, as if by a natural suggestion of thought, sprung the prayer for the rapid evolvement of the glory that is wrapped in it, as a flower is wrapped in its seed. Our Father in heaven:'--if so-then, "Thy kingdom come, and thy will be done by thy children on earth as by thy children in heaven.' And as the prayer passes down from age to age, a manual of piety, it witnesses to the fact, that when Jesus led his followers into the immediate presence of the invoked Eternal, he deemed the holiest garb in which the spirit could be robed was that of filial love petitioning for universal progress that God would be with his children as a father indeed; and that the most quickening influence to be drawn from solemn approach unto Him who holds the fates of the future in his hands, was the thought of advancement, the vision of our nature's glory issuing from the glory of Him whose image that nature is. He who utters these words of prayer, of the Lord's prayer, in faith, virtually passes through these two states of feeling-he lifts from the earth a steadfast gaze into the heaven of promise, and gives his spirit the refreshment of a generous confidence that all below must become like to all above; and then, when he has fed his heart's desire, by an upward look to God, and an onward look to Providence, he feels that the prayer has involved him in duties; and having said in hope, Thy kingdom come,' if he would not be false to the spirit of his own supplication, to that hope he must add energy, and do something towards the accomplishment of his own petition by sanctifying himself, and expel, at least from the kingdom within, every rebel impulse and every alien state. And thus is there a prophecy—a prophecy of man's advancement-embodied in that truth, God's paternal nature, which is the gate of prayer; and sublimest expectations for ourselves and for our race are intertwined with those words which daily vehicle our souls to Him from whom no blessing is too great to be expected, and who frowns upon no aspiring, provided only it is pure. But man interprets Providence, not from prophecy, but from facts. From signs in the heavens, be they ever so clear, he shifts his restless, unsatisfied eye to the signs on the earth, and there he sees realities most unlike the visions of his

meditation, when he closed his eyes on the outward world, and saw all things in God-there he sees not humanity as bathed in promise, a linked brotherhood in the bosom of impartial and paternal love; he sees troubled and countless streams of human destiny that seem to have no common source, no common issue -there he hears not with charmed heart the accents of Him, the Prophet of hope, who spoke of the one fold, and the one shepherd; he hears the voices of repulsive and discordant groups, between whom immediate sympathy is next to impossible-and there, amid the speckled aspects of our species-amid varieties of nature and of character that have raised the question, whether man be sprung from a common origin-amid lines of sepation that insulate each mass, making every people a cluster of factions, and elevating very trifles into frowning and impassable barriers, whilst Christianity, the restorer, seems to halt in her onward march towards universal dominion, as though Christ had described his religion literally, when he said, Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword;'-amid these several perplexities there are presented the terms of a problem to which man's sagacity can scarce give a determinate answer, and whose varying conditions he cannot harmonize with that simple, paternal, universal plan, to which, if the gospel is true, they are all subservient.

We present this question now only so far as Christianity is connected with it. It is not the general subject we aim to grasp, but this particular subject-How has the gospel, in its character of a supposed revelation, been affected by the past?-how, from present appearances, is it likely to be affected by the future?

Our first object, then, is to relieve our hopes from Christianity of any damping or dimming influence that whatever is unsatisfactory in the past, may have spread around them.

There would seem to be an impression that Christianity, if true, ought to have produced certain effects on human character, which, in point of fact, it has not produced, and hence, on the principle, that by their fruits ye shall know them,' the suspicion steals in, that if tested by its results, it would be difficult to show that it is a mighty engine of Providence. But the practical test, by their fruits ye shall know them,' is not, and never can be, a test of opinions; it is a test of men. 'By their fruits ye shall know them,' may determine of many a man that he is not a Christian; it can never determine of Christianity that it is not true, though it may determine that it has no practical influence in this heart or in that. There are other truthspolitical truths, economical truths, moral truths-whose practical influence is nothing, or next to nothing; yet they are truths still. Certain expectations were entertained of Christianity, and

these expectations are disappointed. Why were they ever entertained? Here are two facts-a certain amount of expectation, and the failure of that expectation. The first goes to the honour of Christianity; the second goes to the dishonour, not of it, but of as many as recognized its fitness to produce great results, and then took it into their hearts so coldly that it produced nothing. Here is a statement of the case.-Human nature contemplates Christianity, we may suppose for the first time, to discover what is in it; it feels impressed as it reads; and as representation after representation of life, duty, Providence and God, flash upon the conscience and the heart, it determines that influences of such a character, if real, must manifest themselves in the grandeur of their moral effects; but when these effects do not follow, the very nature which felt its potency to produce such effects, from the absence of these effects now infers its falsehood. This is vicious reasoning; the moment we admit that Christianity, if true and believed in, would work mightily and develope great virtues, Christianity is no longer on its trial-it is now ourselves who are on our trial. The responsibility is now not its, but ours; by admitting that it is fitted for certain results, we become accountable for those results and their absence or their presence are no longer tests of it: they are tests of us. The polished and fine-wrought weapon is unused in its secret place, and is then pronounced not genuine, because those spiritual foes abound against which there was no direction of the keenness of its edge. There is a fiction of the imagination which we would attempt to expose. We speak of Christianity as if it was something real; we personify it-we conceive of it as a spiritual agent maintaining a war with evil, and wielding the energies of the living God; and around this strange and floating fancy have gathered vague and magnificent expectations, whose disappointment has vexed our confidence in this impersonated power-and because the results are far from according with this kind of conception, we begin to doubt the reality of an influence whose true nature and modes of operation we never rightly conceived and we suppose that Christianity itself has failed, when it is only our visionary notions of it that are proved to be feeble thinking and idle dreams. Christianity is not an agent-it is an influence. It has no existence but in the heart it impresses, and that heart, not it, is the responsible being-responsible for all the fruits that influence is fitted to foster. And as reasonably might we conclude that the laws of the material and the moral universe were but fancies, because the directions they would impress on human character and conduct are often blindly and insanely violated, as conclude the gospel to be invalidated because the fitting results of its influences are so little apparent. It makes no pretensions in its